CHAPTER VIII

EVERYTHING is as merry as a marriage bell, and the goose hangs high!” Stephen Whipple quoted, with a hearty laugh, as he and Fred Walton sat on the old man’s veranda after breakfast one Sunday morning. “And I’m a-thinking, my boy, that the suspended fowl is none other than our fellow citizen, J. B. Thorp. He is as mad as a wet hen. He had us plumb down, and, like the bully he is, was pounding the blood out of us with no thought of letting up. Then the rest of the hungry pack of wolves piled on top, and began to get in their work. I was so crazy I didn’t know my hat from a hole in the ground. Then your keen young brain turned the trick, and here we are. Dick has got the dandiest retail store that ever saw the light in a Western town, and it is literally packed and jammed with customers.”

“I am certainly glad it turned out as it did,” Fred replied. “It has been a great thing for Dick.”

The merchant was silent for a moment, and Fred saw him twirling his heavy thumbs as he often did when embarrassed. Finally, after clearing his throat and rather awkwardly crossing his legs, he said:

“I’ve got a silly sort of confession to make, Fred. I reckon nobody is, on the outside, exactly what they are within, and I’ve got my faults like other fellows. On the outside I’m as strait-laced as a hard-shell Baptist, but I’ve always hankered after a periodical lark of some sort. Once in a great while I’ve taken trips just for the pure fun’ of the thing. During the Centennial at Philadelphia I laid down everything and went. I stayed a week, put up at a fine hotel, and lived as high as I knew how. I saw all that there was to see. Then I struck work at one time and went to the Mardi-gras at New Orleans, and then another time I hiked off to the Cotton Exposition in Atlanta. I don’t know why I’m that way, but I am. It is my periodical spree, I reckon. You remember I told you about my boy—the little fellow that passed away?”

“Yes, I remember,” Walton returned, sympathetically.

“Well, as he was growing up, I used to love, above all things, for just me and him—just me and him, you know—to go to places together. Sometimes it was a ride in the country, or fishing, or to do something a little boy would like, but I always sort o’ kept the thought before me that when he’d reached man’s estate, me and him would do some sure-enough ‘bumming,’ as I used to call it—bumming to New York City, where we could take in all the sights like two boys. It may sound silly, but that was one thing I always had to look forward to; but then he took sick and died, and it was out of the question. Since then I’ve never counted on the New York trip.”

“It was sad,” Walton said, gently. “It is a pity he couldn’t have been spared to you.”

“Yes, but he wasn’t,” the merchant sighed. “He wasn’t, and this is what I started out to say: Of all folks I have ever known since my boy’s death, you come nearer filling his place than any one else. No”—and Whipple held up his broad hand—“don’t stop me! I don’t know how it was, but in our first talk that night you kind o’ got hold of my heart-strings. I pitied you as I had never pitied a young fellow before because of the fight you were making. I got interested in it, and determined to help you win. I prayed for you. You were on my mind the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning. You’d said you wanted the money just to pay off the debt you owed your father, and I would have planked the cash right down many and many a time if I hadn’t been afraid I’d spoil a thing that seemed to be of God’s own making. I used to sneak and look at your bank-account. That was mean, but I couldn’t help it. I saw your savings piling up week after week until I forced that five hundred on you, and knew you had three thousand in hand. Then, all at once, it sunk to nothing. Fred, my boy, I went home that night, hugged the old lady, and cried. You needn’t tell me what became of that money. It went to your old daddy as fast as the trains could take it.”

“Yes, I paid him, Mr. Whipple. I am still behind two thousand, with the interest at the rate he charges his customers.”

“He’s a money-lender then?” Whipple said, lifting his brows.

“Yes, he—” Fred hesitated a moment, and then finished, “He is a banker, in a small town in—”

“Don’t—don’t tell me!” Whipple broke in. “Don’t tell me a thing about him! I’m human to the core. I don’t know why it is, but for a long time I have been jealous of his blood claim on you. He throwed you off, and I want to think that I have some sort of right to you. He never loved you as a natural father should, or he couldn’t have driven you to the wall like he did, forcing you to live off among strangers, away from home-ties and all the associations of your young days. Oh, I know I have your good-will, my boy! I heard about the way you stood up for me during the strike my men tried to get up. One of the clerks told me of the nightmeeting that was held, and how you sprang into their midst like an infuriated tiger, and of the ringing speech you made about me and my fair treatment of them, and how they finally begged you not to report the matter and slunk away like egg-sucking dogs. You never would have mentioned it, but it got to me—it got to me.”

“Oh, I only did my duty, Mr. Whipple.” Fred’s face was dyed red. “I thought they were unreasonable, and could not help putting in a word of protest.”

“You were the only one in the entire bunch that did it, all the same,” Whipple said, huskily. “Oh, I know they poke fun at me and laugh at my peculiarities, but I don’t believe you ever did. I am coarse and awkward—I don’t have to be told that; but I try to be genuine and fair to all mankind. But I’ve got away off from what I started to say. Fred, there never was a time when I felt more like one of my periodical sprees than right now. I have never been to New York, and I can’t get over wanting to take it in. My wife don’t care to go. She says such trips tire the very life out of her. She is younger than I am in years, but she ain’t in spirit. I want you to lay off work for a week and go bumming with me. Somehow, I feel like if you’ll go, it will be as if my own boy had lived and grown up and was taking the trip with me. I want to go by New Orleans and spend a day there, and then on to the East, through Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia. What do you say, Fred? The expense is nothing. I want to celebrate. For a week I want to be a new man, and have a high old time.”

“I should like it very much,” Walton said, “if you really want me to go.”

“Well, pack your grip, and we’ll be off day after tomorrow. We’ll tell the boys that we have to see our New York importers and our sugar men in New Orleans, and they can guess the rest. Now, I’m going up to tell the old lady that it is settled, and she can sleep or do any other old thing she likes till, we come back. We’ll have a rip-roaring time, Fred. We’ll go all the gaits, even if we get put in the lock-up.”